Nadia Lohan already knew what she wanted out of VFS: to study Game Design and ultimately bring her art to the game industry. But she also knew she needed a little time first, so instead of diving right in, she began her VFS tenure in Foundation Visual Art & Design.

Students have countless reasons for beginning their studies in the one-year Foundation program, whether it’s to strengthen and develop vital art skills like life drawing or to simply get a chance to dive into multiple disciplines – film, design, animation – before committing to one for the long haul.

For Nadia, it paid off. She had hopes of working for game industry heavyweight Ubisoft. After graduating, she instead signed on with Vancouver upstart Action Pants as a Front End Artist.

Well, if you follow the game industry, you probably know that Action Pants was recently acquired…

…by a little company called Ubisoft. Life’s a funny thing.

We asked Nadia to turn the clock back a couple of years and revisit her time in Foundation, to see how it all began.

People go into Foundation for a few different reasons. What was yours? Did you always know you’d be going into Game Design?

My reason for going into the Foundation program was that I just didn’t feel ready enough to go into Game Design. I had only graduated high school a year before and didn’t have any post-secondary training, so when I looked into the program, I thought that it would be a good way for me to develop a broader range of skills to bring to the table in Game Design. And honestly, I’m really glad I took it. I learned a lot of valuable things not just from my instructors, but from my fellow classmates as well.

And yes, I always knew that I would be going into Game Design. In fact, when I was a little girl I constantly emailed companies like Nintendo asking them what sort of courses I should take in school to get in the game industry. It was awesome because they always replied!

Let’s talk about the Foundation program itself. How did you find the experience?

As a traditional artist, I was opened up to the world of digital media and felt like there were so many more things to explore, and different ways I could grow because of it. It was the first time I really learned that the process is just as important as the result… if not more! I’m really glad that I took the program, because not only did a learn a lot, but I met a lot of really good friends there.

Any highlights from the year that really jump out at you?

One of the best times of Foundation was doing my Discovery Project. Essentially, it’s a project that’s assigned to you for a whole term in which you have no limits to what you want to accomplish, or discover.

I chose to make my own concept art for an imaginary game world, but in order to do that, I had to come up with backstory for everything in order for it all to make sense as to why it all looked the way it did. In fact, it ended up being a lot more work than I thought it would be. And that was the point where I actually learned how important my process was.

At a certain point in their year, Foundation students specialize in a certain stream depending on what area they want to pursue afterwards. What was your focus?

It was a tight race between the Animation stream and the Digital Design stream. I ended up choosing the animation stream because it dealt a lot more with things like character and environment design, or how to compose a frame properly. That certainly translated over well with what I was doing in Game Design. The Digital Design stream also would have been a good choice in that they dealt a lot with Flash and ActionScript, which is a program you may or may not use a lot in Game Design.

Foundation students most often end up in Digital Design, Film Production, or Animation & Visual Effects – both 3D and Classical – but you went a different way… not that you’re not the first to do that. What do you love about being an artist for games in particular?

The art in games has always been so inspiring to me. It’s what pulled me into games as a young girl and really made me think about a career in the game industry.

I think the reason I love it so much is because I want to be able to give that same feeling to someone else when they play a game I helped with. And actually seeing something you helped to make inside an honest-to-goodness game is really an awesome feeling.

What, to you, is the pinnacle of great game art?

That’s a really good question. There’s a lot of games out there that have great artwork that I wish I could mention, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to say Final Fantasy X. It was because of the artwork that I was drawn into the world of RPGs, which is my favourite genre. In fact, the CG was so good that I remember thinking for years after that there weren’t that many games that could compare to the quality of it. On consoles, at least!

And your personal influences?

I’ve always looked up to people like Tetsuya Nomura, Hyung-Tae Kim, Nik Ainley, and Scott Robertson. Just to name a few.

Thanks, Nadia, and good luck at Ubisoft Vancouver! Canadian high school students interested in taking the Foundation program at VFS should check out the 2009 Cross-Canada High School Scholarship Competition, where they could win one of three full-tuition scholarships.